Last Friday, the sane portion of the world rejoiced at the announcement that Fidel Castro had died. His death doesn’t immediately change anything in the island prison of Cuba; brother Raul is still in charge. Yet there is a psychological lift, at least, knowing that the primary perpetrator of the miseries of the Cuban people finally left the scene of the living.

Castro has his acolytes on the political left who praise him and who mourn his passing. They try to make everyone else believe that when the dictator Batista was ousted, Castro brought relief to an oppressed people. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Executions and harsh imprisonments of his political enemies have been the hallmark of the Cuban experience under the Castro regime. He, along with his chief lieutenant, Che Guevara, murdered approximately 73,000 Cuban citizens; some say the actual number is closer to 100,000.

The US initially supported Castro’s revolution, but then came to realize the mistake. Castro aligned himself with the communist vision and developed tight ties to the USSR. I won’t recount the Cuban Missile Crisis here, but a crisis it certainly was back in 1962. The world was on the edge of nuclear war over it.

Castro admirers point to what they believe is an unblemished record of healthcare and literacy on the island. According to Humberto Fontova, that is a fiction:

For the record: In 1958, that “impoverished Caribbean island” had a higher standard of living than Ireland and Austria, almost double Spain and Japan’s per capita income, more doctors and dentists per capita than Britain, and lower infant mortality than France and Germany – the 13th-lowest in the world, in fact. Today, Cuba’s infant-mortality rate – despite the hemisphere’s highest abortion rate, which skews this figure downward – is 24th from the top.

So, relative to the rest of the world, Cuba’s health care has worsened under Castro, and a nation with a formerly massive influx of European immigrants needs machine guns, water cannons and tiger sharks to keep its people from fleeing, while half-starved Haitians a short 60 miles away turn up their noses at any thought of emigrating to Cuba.

In 1958, 80 percent of Cubans were literate, and Cuba spent the most per capita on public education of any nation in Latin America.

Yet for many, this is a paradise that would be even better if not for the evil US, which, until the Obama administration, placed a trade embargo on Cuba. Yes, it’s all the fault of those nasty capitalists.

President Obama’s statement after Castro’s death said nothing about the suffering he inflicted. Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, outdid even Obama with his eulogy of the totalitarian tyrant.

Trudeau expressed “deep sorrow” at the world’s loss of a murderous thug. Castro was, in Trudeau’s fawning words, “a legendary revolutionary and orator” who made “significant improvements” to healthcare and education (never mind all those books Cubans weren’t allowed to read). Castro, opined Trudeau, had a “tremendous dedication and love for the Cuban people”—except for those he killed, of course—and they, in turn, had “a deep and lasting affection” for their dear leader.

Trudeau’s eulogy was so gag-worthy that a bevy of phony Trudeau eulogies popped up on social media over the weekend. Here are a couple of my favorites:

“Mr. Stalin’s greatest achievement was his eradication of obesity in the Ukraine through innovative agricultural reforms.”

One hardly knows how to express anymore the depth of the disaster of the past seven years of Obama. I’ve tried, but am almost at the end of words to describe how he has damaged our country, perhaps irreparably.

The main responsibility of our government—with a president leading the way—is to understand the threats we face and protect our liberties. Yet President Obama has gone out of his way to discard basic liberties, especially for Christians whose consciences are being threatened by that very government. We’re now supposed to bow to the new morality of LGBT correctness in all areas of life, even to the point of accepting transgenderism as natural.

On the economic front, we now have someone who promotes the very ideology that has laid waste to many other nations:

And his visit to Cuba only solidified his fascination with that ideology:

When Islamic radicals terrorize Europe, he practically invites them to come here also:

His anti-colonialism dominates his worldview, blinding him to the real threat:

When asked what he’s going to do about this threat, he mouths some of the right words for public consumption and says he’s already dealing with it—trust him, his plan will work:

What could be worse for the country than what we have experienced in two terms of Obama? Well, a couple of things:

Cuba underwent a communist revolution in 1959, spearheaded by Fidel Castro, his brother Raul, and Che Guevara. At the time, many didn’t realize the ideology behind the revolution and saw it only as the rightful deposing of a dictator who had ruled for many years.

It didn’t take long for the truth to come to light. Those who disagreed with the drift of this new government were either executed or became political prisoners. Cuba became an outpost from which the Soviet Union could operate in the western hemisphere.

An attempt to overthrow the Castro government, the Bay of Pigs, was a disaster, largely due to indecision by President Kennedy. A year later, we discovered that the Soviets were building missile bases on the island with the intent of aiming nuclear missiles at most of mainland America. This Cuban Missile Crisis, which included a naval blockade of Cuba and the eventual removal of those missiles, again showed the Castro regime’s true colors.

Although the Soviet Union is no more, the ideology and practices of the Cuban government have not changed after all these years despite our economic boycott of the island. Cubans live the lives of those in all Third-World nations.

So what does President Obama do? He decides to normalize relations with a government that has never changed its ideology or practices. Then he becomes the first American president to visit since Calvin Coolidge back in the 1920s.

That would be fine if he had negotiated some real changes in that regime, but all continues as before. We are now to become good friends with those who still throw political opponents in prison and who execute those who are considered dangerous to the revolution.

Just prior to Obama’s plane touching down in Havana, peaceful protesters were arrested. People have no voice even today. Nothing has changed.

Neither has Obama sought to show any support for those who suffer for their opposition to tyranny. But he did go to a baseball game. He celebrates while others languish:

Then there was this photo:

That’s the image of Che Guevara in the background, the arm of Castro in those early days who had no problem personally overseeing the torture and execution of political opponents.

College students think it’s cool to wear Che t-shirts. I wonder how many of them really know who he was? Obama knows. He doesn’t care. In fact, he seemed quite at home in Cuba. Could it be because he views that government as more in line with his ideology? For Obama, America is always the problem.

I like the suggestion I heard while he was making his “historic” visit: if he likes it so much, why not encourage him to stay until January 20, 2017? That might be a great benefit to the nation he supposedly leads.

As for t-shirts, how about this one, which makes the point rather well?

When Congress reconvenes after its summer recess, the Iran deal will be front and center. We now know some details about a secret side-deal agreed to by Iran and the IEAE, which is supposed to be the international inspector of nuclear development. We now know that the IEAE is allowing Iran to conduct the inspections itself.

Yes, you read that correctly.

How does this not defy all reason and logic? How can anyone believe it is wisdom to let the nation developing nuclear weapons be its own inspector? It will report to the IEAE what it “discovers.” Right.

Yet President Obama is relentless in his push to get congressional approval for this deal. Hey, he got Iran talking, didn’t he? Isn’t that a major accomplishment in itself?

He was counting on his party to back him, but some are balking, like New York Senator Chuck Schumer.

Only one other Democrat senator has come out against the agreement thus far, but others are wavering, while Republicans are forming a fairly solid block against it. It may be that Schumer has come out simply because there are enough Democrats who will go along with it that he has been given permission to oppose it publicly for his own political gain. His character in the past shows that could be the case. We’ll see.

Obama’s people also have hinted that even if Congress disapproves and is able to override his veto, he will depend on the UN’s approval and proceed as if Congress is non-existent. Well, that’s been his pattern already, so it’s not too hard to believe.

It is obvious that our president is far more amenable to Iranian leaders who have pledged to wipe Israel off the map and who are in the process of figuring out how to hit America with nuclear missiles than he is to anyone who goes against him politically:

Combine this fantasy Iranian deal with his fantasy about Cuba, with whom he has now normalized relations while Cuban dissidents continue to languish in its prisons, and you have his worldview clearly on display:

In the sixth year of Barack I, emperor of America, we are in grave danger. We need a radical regime change:

President Obama has now met with Raul Castro and begun the normalization of relations process with Cuba, thereby reversing American policy that has been in effect for more than 50 years, ever since the Castro brothers and their chief lieutenant, Che Guevara, ousted what was admittedly a corrupt Cuban government.

However, replacing a corrupt government with a totalitarian Marxist regime that routinely rounds up “enemies” of the state and executes them is not an improvement. Allowing the old Soviet Union to establish a base of operations just 90 miles from America was not an improvement. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 could have led to WWIII.

Has anything really changed with that regime? Sure, Fidel stepped down, only to be replaced by his brother. Again, not an improvement. The Christians still cannot meet in open churches, although they have spread throughout the island prison in home meetings, and apparently are thriving. Thank God for that. But that’s not because the Cuban government is now so “liberal” in the old sense of that term.

President Obama doesn’t really care what’s going on now. He just wants us to “turn the page” on the past and ignore the atrocities that have characterized this murderous cabal:

He claims that Cuba no longer supports terrorism and has no terrorist intentions. Why, they have been “clean” for the last six months. What an amazing record!

We’re told by Obama’s supporters that we should trust him, that he has more inside information than we do. Surely he would never be so foolish as to lead us astray when it comes to something as vital as America’s national security.

Then again.

Never in the history of our country has a president so betrayed national security as this one. Never have we had anyone this radical, both in foreign and domestic policy, in charge. It is my sincere prayer—and I don’t offer this as a cliché, but as genuine—that we survive until January 2017.

I’m still playing catch-up after my week away. When I was in San Juan, Puerto Rico, a week ago Tuesday, I heard the news that Hugo Chavez, self-anointed dictator of Venezuela, had finally succumbed to the cancer he had been fighting for some time. He had availed himself of the Cuban healthcare system for treatment, putting his future in the hands of ideological soulmates, believing to the end, I suppose, that the socialist paradise would be his temporal salvation. He was wrong.

Chavez sought to do for Venezuela what Castro did for Cuba, what the family of looney leaders have concocted for North Korea, and what other assorted socialist-communist visionaries have attempted in various parts of the world. He hated the United States, particularly when George Bush was president, calling Bush at one point “the devil.” I think he was a little confused about the identity of the devil; that confusion probably has lifted now:

This motif occurred to more than one cartoonist:

Chavez was also one of the darlings of the radical Occupy Movement. This has certainly been a downer for them:

The cult of personality Chavez promoted in Venezuela was no different than that of Mao’s in China or Castro’s in Cuba. And like both of them, he did his best to bully his opposition by shutting down all media outlets that wouldn’t bow down to his socialist policies. Freedom was becoming a rare commodity in that nation.

While I can feel sorrow for a lost soul, I cannot be unhappy that his reign of terror and error has come to an abrupt end. Perhaps for the people of Venezuela who still understand the principles of liberty, there is hope now for their future.